Sunday, June 21, 2009

I received this message today, from what seem to be a somewhat sophisticated spammer. I receive academic spam regularly, usually from conferences in Florida that accept computer-written papers. I usually just delete them but this one was interesting. They managed to grab my name, my thesis title, and my institution and fill them into what is certainly a form letter. Note the extra spaces before the commas and the two periods after my thesis title (and the odd use of two closing statements).

In the course of a research at the Library ofUniversity of Toronto , We came across a reference to your thesis on Head-driven probabilistic parsing for word lattices. .

As we would like to make your work available to a larger audience, I am wondering if you may be interested in publishing your thesis in the form of a printed book.

Your reply including an e-mail address to which I can send an e-mail with further information in an attachment will be greatly appreciated.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours, Kind Regards,

ToolaseeMarooodamoothoo Acquisition Editor"

A quick internet search for "LAP Lambert Academic Publishing" leads to some interesting blog hits of other people challenging this shady practice. Apparently if you follow through with their invitation, the first thing they ask for is your banking information, ostensibly to deposit funds from all those sales. To be fair, from their Amazon.com listings (which I won't link to, they don't deserve the hits), and from many experience reports on blogs, they do actually turn your PDF into a 'book' and send you 5 copies. So, if you want five free copies of your thesis, maybe this is a good scheme.

However, since my thesis is available freely on my website [pdf] in full format. I can't imagine why I would want to sell it on Amazon for an hugely inflated price. It won't be a bestseller. I won't make money. It would just be a rip-off for a couple (at most) of people. I guess now that we have print-on-demand publishing, which is what LAP Lambert uses, anything can be a book. It ushers in a new age of vanity publishing. I can't say I have much respect for people who feel their research gains legitimacy because they put a hard cover on it and charge US$100+. In case my website ever goes offline, my thesis is also freely available forever at the Library of Canada. So, LAP Lambert, no I don't need your services to make my thesis more widely available.

"LAP Lambert Academic Publishing" is the English language division of VDMVerlag. At first I thought 'oh, that must be related to Springer-Verlag', a well-respected academic publishing house. It turns out that 'verlag' means 'publishing house' and they are not affiliated.

[Edit 2015 - an earlier version of this post called out the Acquisition Editor's name as being funny. This was insensitive and offensive, and I apologize. Please everyone stop talking about the names of the editors - it is irrelevant to the issue.]

291 comments:

esI too received this email, only the acquisitions editor was Farzabeen Bahadoor. Great names. . . but they hardly sound German . . . and it is a German publishing company . . . legit but dodgy all the same . . .

If you want a bound version of your thesis/dissertation, I "self-published" my thesis using Lulu.com. I did a paperback cover and it was less than $10 (my thesis was about 90 pages). I'm not selling it to the public, but my advisers received a copy.

I also received this email and my immediate reaction was that it was a scam from a company that mines academic databases. I think that even if it is legitimate, I don't want to be associated with a company who poorly markets itself.

I received the same e-mail today, and it was the second e-mail of the same nature I received. The first one came directly from VDM, the parent company. There's a real fierce discussion on chronicle forums: http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,45997.0.html

Hi,Thank you for the advice,I also got the same letter but I contacted my supervisor that warns me. I've received it from "Stephanie Assy" as the acquisition editor. Terrible. So the next would be our bank account. I'm really thankfull for that. It would help a lot of people./Rossy

Just got the same letter, except that they got my surname and first name the wrong way round. I also believe that, in most cases at least, your thesis once completed is the intellectual property of your university. Any company that wishes to publish it should really enter into negotiations with the university rather than the author. I also find it interesting that they ask for an email address.....in an email which they have already sent to you!

I just got a similar letter today, and I would like to add one more Acquisition Editor name to the list of interesting names: mine was "Rubina Oozageer". I received the message on my Facebook account, and the picture of this Rubina was a good-looking young Indian woman with an academically suspicious cleavage!Like many of you, I have my thesis as a freely downloadable PDF on my website. No reason to even consider such a publishing proposal, even if it were not a scam.

Thanks dear colleagues,I recieved the same letter .But I am in habit of cross checking by many search engine about the authenticity of any unknown email with such offers;unasked for.We must not hurriedly get into such things, be they academic,financial, social etc.Geeta

I received the same Email last week and by going through all comments I would like to conclude that why don't you make your thesis available online at free of cost. No need to publish your published work where only the cover would differ. Thanks guys for all of your postings.----Shafiq

I got Alina Covali...they are getting better with names...but sadly not with their research, she had details from a bio stub for me and not my dissertation title. Oh well, better luck next time Lambert

I also got the same letter. I never even wrote a thesis (as I'm working on my Bachelor's degree) and none of the stuff I've ever written has landed in my university's library. I even checked the library myself. It's definitely a scam. Good thing I checked.

just out of curiosity, on facebook, do they search via university email addresses associated to the facebook accounts or just find your name and send this message to everyone with your name on facebook?

also, Nihah is incredibly well spoken and has a ridiculously large vocabulary,

"I would be au fait with your scepticism and would understand your circumspection given my unconventional approach and the multitude of scams which have regrettably besieged the internet. Nonetheless, I assure you that this is a genuine publishing proposal."

I just got the same email from my Facebook account. they got my name and thesis title right.The acquisition editor is Parvez Bheenick. I spoke to my supervisor, who is very delighted about this "great opportunity", but I have my reservations. Thank you for the warning.

Hi, I got the same message through facebook account! Goodness knows where they had found the title of my dissertation - i had forgotten about it entirely! Thanks everyone for alerting me to the scam, Laura (Happy to continue to be unpublished)

Once again, thank you for this posting as it confirmed my suspicions. While it is annoying to receive this sort of email, the originators of this apparent scam have shown great industry as they are clearly searching a wide range of sources (my doctorate is out of South Africa).

I received the exact same e-mail this morning and thought to myself who on earth would be interested in a hard copy of my thesis anyway? I don't even own a copy!!!

I am also seriously concerned with LAP Lambert's high turnover in editors. My e-mail was signed by Natraj Seetaram. It's also interesting to note how Germany somehow employ mainly nationalities other than German. Are they discriminating against their own people?

yes, i received a letter too.a few weeks after signing up to facebook.and to think i got such a thrill that my little australian thesis would be actually read internationally.Back to gathering dust.Sonia

I got the same e-mail and Natraj Seetaram is my Acquisition Editor. I think LAP- LAMBERT Academic Publishing really exists, because one of my colleagues got his work published there. The problem is, I am not sure whether the e-mail I received was really from the publisher.I asked Google and found the official web site is http://www.lap-publishing.com.while the link mentioned in e-mail is http://www.lappublishing.com. Wonder how different address could lead to the same page. that's very sophisticated :-(

Why does everybody think this is spam? All they do is send you a free copy of your own thesis, and then fill up the world's book publishing catalogues with all the titles. I just got my book in the mail, and I haven't given them a penny, just the number of an empty savings account. I don't know how they make their money but I suspect if even one person buys my book at €49 they will have easily recouped the cost of my free copy. It's just a good shelf and resume stuffer in my opinion!

I got Olga Bobutac from Chisinau, Moldova who contacted me through Facebook. If this is a scam or a POD company using unethical practices that ultimately originates in Moldova, it makes sense. I've been to Moldova, and I have friends there, but financially, the country is struggling (esp in comparison to its neighbors) and the mafia is at work there (esp. in the sex trafficking trade, which sells 70% of Moldova orphan girls throughout Europe and the Middle East and elsewhere). I think it would be unwise to pursue publishing with LAP. Lulu Press is a respectable POD publisher headquartered in the States, and I would work with them instead.

Hadiyyah Solim was my acquisition editor. I wonder how they make their money? Somebody must be doing the research, spending the time tracking down the e-mail addresses of the authors (mine came directly to my current work address, which I got long after my thesis was written), printing the theses, mailing them ... you just wouldn't think it was worth it.

A hyperlink I found on the LAP website ran a query at Amazon.com, returning about 4000 thesis titles. My first query-result was entitled "VARIABLE-DENSITY FLOW OF GROUNDWATER: Quantifying the Effects ...". This thesis is currently "Amazon.com Sales Rank: #873,687 in Books". Amazon don't reveal actual sales, but the chart at http://www.fonerbooks.com/surfing.htm suggests to me that someone (perhaps the author of that thesis ;-) had purchased one LAP-published copy of this thesis in the past week.

I vaguely recall receiving a total of $100 or $200 in royalty checks for my UMI-published thesis during the early 1980s, making me (as far as I could tell) one of their best-selling authors. Their first 10 sales/year gave me no royalties, I believe, and after that I got a small royalty (perhaps $1/sale). No problem for me: I was happy that *anyone* was willing to buy my thesis! I have never been hassled by UMI, or ProQuest, for self-publishing my thesis (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~cthombor/Pubs/cmu-cs-80-140/).

ProQuest's business model, and LAP's, relies on the folks with more $$ than time (a.k.a. PT Barnum's suckers ;-) who want a minimum-hassle hardcopy; and also on the (I suspect rather few) academic authors who will refrain from self-publishing in the hope of getting more royalties.

Nobody -- probably not even the folks at LAP -- seems very likely to get rich from this venture, but I don't see any reason to think of it as fraudulent or even "dodgy". Some folks (the editors) will, I suspect, make a bare livelihood through their online labour.

you guys judging the editor's names must think that americans, or wherever you guys are from, are the only people that exist on earth...nothing to do with scam..these people work for a publishing company, be it LAP or VDM Verlag that got branches around the world, that's the reason why the names differ or might be 'weird' to some and they get paid per thesis they manage to get published. As well publishing with them is free, so better see the good side of it instead of calling scam people who are only trying to work. As well there's no obligation, no one is forced to publish, you can always click on the delete button instead of making a whole fuss out of it :)

I am writing on behalf of Lambert Academic Publishing. Publishing houses have long been considered as closed to everyone, without any interaction with authors, book buyers and readers. However, we, at LAP are different from conventional publishers. Instead we pursue an innovative 'open book policy' where we continuously identify scientific and academic projects from different universities and colleges. We do contact authors by email and propose publishing contract to them. Our aim is to provide knowledge to a wide market and connect the book buyers and readers to the right author and the books they are looking for.

Our books are distributed through more than 80,000 bookstores and more than 3,000 online shops worldwide.

We are committed in providing the best publishing experience available to our authors, we are thus open to the concerns of all our authors and customers. While our request for bank details have been often assumed to be some type of identity fraud we wish reassure our authors that we use the VeriSign security system and that such request is for the sole purpose of royalties payment. Upon suggestions of many authors we will be soon implementing new royalties payment methods such as Paypal.

Often confused with Vanity Press our publishing model is very different from it. We wish to provide the following details on the difference between a Vanity Press and our publishing model:

* We distribute your book worldwide through mainstream and well known shops such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble or AbeBooks.* You are not charged any cost for the production of your book. We bear all production,distribution and marketing cost for you and we pay you royalties for specific periods.* You are able to publish 80% your book through journals and reviews. Your book is not tied up when you get a contract from LAP.

Whereas Vanity Press charges for all the services mentioned above instead LAP look after all these at no cost to the author and with the advantage of a dedicated Acquisition Editor who is engaged to attend all the author's request.

In a time where most actors of the publishing industry are turning irrelevant and out of date, Lambert Academic Publishing partners with its authors to enter the new publishing era. Authors can join us now and be part of this revolution of the publishing industry.

Also, I have to agree with Steven -- enough about the names. I know I started it, but names are just names. If someone has a different sort of name, that doesn't make them less trustworthy or imply anything.

I just thought a name with three consecutive 'o's was interesting, but I didn't mean to lead the conversation into an insensitive laugh at cultural differences. Apologies to Toolasee Marooodamoothoo, Nancy Assy, and the others.

Also, I'm not sure that it's right to call LAP a 'scam' operation. I didn't say this and I don't have any evidence that they are cheating anyone. I do, however, think they are spammers and they have a business practice that I don't really respect very much.

I'm from Thailand. Thanks so much for the post. It's very useful. Actually at first I was so glad that a publishing house got interested in my thesis but a second thought, a question came to my mind.. Is that a spam (becasue you know today on Internet anything could be spam. But the website of LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, especially on the Management page, looks professional. Well, thanks!

Dear all, I 'd like to inform you that its a damm "SCAM:. I have worked with them and I have also quit the company. The company is situated in Mauritius. They are making a lot of money out of your theses. Please beware.........

I got this mail too and searched the net for the company. It was a little spurious to start their marketing with not asking money from authors. But while I wouldn't give a damn whether or nto they make money from selling my theis (why would they?), if I can't put it on my CV, what's the point? Thanks for the info.

Just received this email - your blog post is the top hit when you google around to find out more about these people. Thanks for the heads up - I had a strong feeling it was spam, but the letter was oddly personal in that it referenced my institution and one of my papers.

Earning money online never been this easy and transparent. You would find great tips on how to make that dream amount every month. So go ahead and click here for more details and open floodgates to your online income. All the best.

It is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE for them to take any money from you just by knowing your name, id# (social security etc), and your bank account number.

Funny names? They hire people in cheap labor countries to find and contact hordes of people. Nothing weird about this except for strange Americans who have no concept of foreign names.

I was contacted and got several real person respones. I'm yet undecided as to wheter or not to let them "publish" my thesis as I'm not sure what would be gained. On the other hand no one has managed to point out what stands to be lost. As some people pointed out this might not be something you write on your CV unless your thesis does sell a few copies.

Great article! Yes pressure can be high but when you work with people like yourself you know every day your going to learn something! Working in an agency (or the right agency I should say) can give your results working with a brilliant team often gives brilliant results.

Hey guys this is not fraud I gt my work published and received a copy of book as promised by publishing house..visithttp://www.amazon.com/Current-Differencing-Transconductance-Amplifier-Applications/dp/3838380347

I also received the same email in July 2010. Then I wanted to learn more about their purpose on their field of job. Therefore I asked for a face to face appoinment. After then nobody wrote me anything about it. What a surprise!

This is a German Company located in Saarbrücken as it is written in the email, but I dont think this company even exists.

I received the exact letter in July and was actaually convinced until my supervisor advised me to follow it up. Thanx for the alert. I however had already sent them a pdf version of my thesis for them to read through, does this affect me in any way? does anybody know?

I would like to clear your misunderstanding about LAP Publishing House. LAP Verlag exists really and you are sure to get your free copy. I did publish my dissertation with an acquisition editor named zuleikha khodabocus ( her email add is z.khodabocus@lap-publishing.com) and she really helped me a lot with my book. I just received my free copy last week and I am about to publish my Master Thesis now. Well concerning the bank details, it not for theft or whatever you guys are thinking. My acquisition editor told me that it is not necessary to put my bank details and I can open a new account just to feel secure when I get a minimum of royalties which is payable each 30 June of the year. I was afraid to give my bank account number too but after talking to the editor I was relieved and try my chance in publishing my thesis costless. If you guys want to go for publication, you can contact the above person.

Hello everyone. I'm Anna, from Russia. I got the same letter from Vasilii Gorchinski. And I found some strange things in his suggestion. Fistly, the second letter that Gorchinski sent to me contained a mistake in my name and sex: he called me Mr, despite I'm a woman, actually :) And the most interesting thing is that he wrote my name correctly in the first letter. Could he forgot the name within one day? :)Secondly, there are so many acquisition editors in this publishing house, are not there? Do you know how LAP can pay all these people? I have never suspected that selling science books could be so succesful.And finally, I want to ask Gayatri, Lama and other people who have got the message from Gorchinski. In what subject do you have science works, if have? If you are humanitarians, it will be OK. But if you are not, it'll mean that Vasilii Gorchinski is no less than unknown universal genium. I belive that LAP is a respected publishing house, but I doubt that Vasilii Gorchinski is a member of it. What do you think?

I recently also received a similar message. What first made me think that something wasn't quite right is that I received the message through Facebook. If they happened upon my research online, I would think my email would be easier to track me down with than my Facebook account.

I had 2 emails from them offering to publish separate titles they identified as a “thesis” (actually short conference papers).

If you want to publish a thesis, unless you have exotic requirements like colour pictures, I suggest you do what I did: use a print on demand publisher like Createspace (search for my name on Amazon – I think I sold 1 copy of my thesis this way, but who cares?). You have total control over how your book is published including the retail price (in my case, I don’t care if I don’t make a profit, so I priced mine at a level where I have to sell a few dozen to break even, a lot for a PhD thesis and you can find a free PDF online if you are cheap — the main cost is printing a proof and getting it mailed to you, only expensive if outside the US).

I don’t understand the value of a publisher who will publish anything without proofreading vs. self-publishing and the latter is now so easy, anyone who can generate a PDF to a specified page size can do it.

I am writing on behalf of the International publishing house, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.

In the course of a research on the The University of Adelaide, I came across a reference to your work in the field of UrbHabMgt.We are an International publisher whose aim is to make academic research available to a wider audience.LAP Publishing would be especially interested in publishing your dissertation in the form of a printed book.

Your reply including an e-mail address to which I can send an e-mail with further information in an attachmentwill be greatly appreciated.

I also receive the same male at 3rd February, written by Ludmila Caus, Acquisition Editor. But I cannot understand what should the further step?? Is it really exist or original LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG?? If I put the money really they will publish it in printed version or is it a frod?? Please help me by your suggestion ?? R they reliable?

I have received the celebrated mail today. Now they have a Spanish branch, as the man (Andrés Pajarón) says he writes on behalf of Editorial Académica Española "a trademark of LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG".

Dear all, actually I will disappoint you by saying this, but this is not a scam... What true is , that this company use outsourcing, this is why the names does not sound really German... i have published my thesis with them.. and its alright... it is not a bestselling book (most probably because of my specific study area), but at least I can say that my dissertation get published and it is sold online... it is up to you..to believe it or not..

So anybody and everybody can get his work published nowadays!!!! At least one can say he has a publication on his side....Inarguably the opportunity of the millennium....Go ahead guys...this is perhaps the easiest possible avenue to see your name (and your image, too) on a well-designed cover...you can't let go of this rocking opportunity of opening yourself up to the world...Forget about proof-reading, don't you dare bother about editing let alone the quality of your work...It's not just an opportunity, it's God's bliss in disguise....So, LAP it up bro, LAP it up....

I would like to clarify all your doubts. This is not a spam and its real. Today I received my first copy of my first book with LAP. I got my first email from "Tatiana Costandachi" (t.costandachi@lap-publishing.com)on 7th Feb and sent my work on 19th feb and today 2nd March the printed book is with me. It took only three weeks for the whole process. I also doubted just like any other fellow on net. Then I decided to take risk(?) Actually what is risk? Are you investing any money? Are you giving up your copy right? Are you risking your bank details? No No. Without spending a single penny, sitting in your house(literally) you are getting your work printed with an international tag, ISBN number. What you are loosing? Please stop this type of mudslinging. If you doubt, don't send, but without verifying don't comment just like that. I also waited to comment till I receive my first copy. Today I am proud that my old research work got printed and available worldwide. If that doesn't sell also, I will not loose anything. But I am optimistic it will sell and I will receive my share(12%)...Ha Ha Ha - Dr. Gopinath Chintala (gopinathcv@yahoo.com)

Thanks so much for this thread. I had my reservations, but I am glad I didn't get my hopes up too high before I checked it out online. I was contacted by Dmitrii Ghimisli. Thought the name did not sound very German...

The other day they pulled up one of my daughters friends on the street with a goose of turning her into supermodel. They even got her parents to come with her to photo shoot and they persuaded the parents that they needed $5000 for a professional photoshoot of their daughter and promoting her. So they got the $5000 took a few pictures and disappered a few weeks later possibly to a new city. Do not be gullible people. auto insurance quotes

I am writing on behalf of an international publishing house, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.

In the course of a research on the **** University, I came across a reference to your thesis on "****".We are an international publisher whose aim is to make academic research available to a wider audience.LAP would be especially interested in publishing your dissertation in the form of a printed book.

Your reply including an e-mail address to which I can send an e-mail with further information in an attachmentwill be greatly appreciated.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.Ludmila CausAcquisition Editor

This is a scam indeed. I just got a translated version. Just the translation was so horrible it could no way be real in any way.They are probably using some publishing platform like www.createspace.com and they get their free slice if your work is ever published.Second paragraph: Así, seríamos interesados a publicar su trabajo en total.

Kreshma Panjanaden is my contact. Pretty good name. I wonder how one company could have so many acquisition directors? Lots of turn over? Or more likely there's like two people just coming up with interesting names for themselves.

hi to all i have published book and got one free copy of it. in oct 2010,now they hv told that royalties calculated and sent once a year on around 30th june.i hope to get som good amount as i hav trcaked my book sales online to b around 50,000 i dont think LAp is fake..

Hi Christopher Collins,Thanks for sharing your views about LAP. From what I know, those that publish with LAP, have their work awarded cum laude/one of the best pieces of research at a University library. You are a researcher, instead of calling LAP’s work vanity publishing (which it isn’t because the authors do not pay for publication) it will be useful if you use your research skills to compare the quality of books published by LAP and those published by your (favourite) academic publishing house. That will be a nice way of proving your point instead of too many empty words - I cannot wait to read your findings.

Hi, Thanks for this information. In a nutshell, this doesn't seem to be 100% a scam but it is worth to have the full information about these guys in advance. I would like to point out that I was contacted by Damian Omar Petoletti from "Editorial Académica Española" which claims to be a comercial brand of LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG.

hi all! i was waiting for my royalties as i had tracked through various websites (to about 50000 copies) about the sale of my book published with LAP. but they say now that they had calculated royalties from OCT 2010 (month n year of publication of my book) till DEC 2010. and dring this period ZERO BOOK HAD BEEN SOLD ,MEANS NO BOOK SOLD. AND SO ZERO ROYALTIES.I WAS SHOCKED AS I WAS EXPECTING. N ROYALTIES FRM JAN 2011 TO DEC 2011 WIL BE GIVEN IN JUNE 2012.SHALL I BE HOPEFUL??? ELSE WATS ACTIONS CAN I TAKE ON THEM NOW??PLESAE KINDLY SUGGEST ME.

I got the following message on my facebook account today. Thank you for the warning.

Dear Zahra Punja,

According to the University of Toronto's electronic library, you submitted a paper entitled "The role of knowledge building in medical education" in 2007 for your postgraduate degree.

Since we are planning publications in this subject area, our editorial team would be glad to know whether you would be keen on publishing the above mentioned work with us.LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing is a member of an international group having nearly 10 years of experience in the publication of high-quality research works from well-known institutions worldwide.For your information, all our books are available in printed form and marketed across the globe through more than 80,000 booksellers worldwide.

Kindly let know if you would be interested in receiving more detailed information in this respect.

Received the email as well. When I did not respond, they sent a more targeted follow-up email:

Some time ago I offered you the possibility of making your academic paperentitled «Caballeros making capital gains : the role of social capital inLatino first-year college persistence : a case study analysis of apredominantly white 4-year institution» available as printed book.

Since I did not hear back from you, I am now wondering if you received myfirst email. I would appreciate if you could confirm your interest in ourpublishing house and I will be glad to provide you with detailed informationabout our services.

(George Says)== I received the email as well. When I did not respond, they sent a more targeted follow-up email:

Some time ago I offered you the possibility of making your academic paper entitled «XXXXXXX» available as printed book.Since I did not hear back from you, I am now wondering if you received my first email. I would appreciate if you could confirm your interest in our publishing house and I will be glad to provide you with entailed information about our services.

"LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG" is indeed suspicious and a sophisticated scam. What a hell a publisher will not edit your manuscript!!. When I inquired about their standing & other technical issues, they got a bit nervous, though they replied. Their first office say the offices were in St Dennis, Mauritius; then they changed and offered an address in Germany. My advice is to keep away from LAP.

They keep trying...bless their hearts. My letter was from Aurora Jian! They really know a hook to the fragile ego of academics. Most dissertations languish in the stacks at our almamater...with only a bit of the vast amount of work published to see the light of day!

I got a similar email about a month ago & did nto respond. Today I got a reminder too !!!Dear ****, Some time ago I offered you the possibility of making your academic paper entitled «*************» available as printed book. Since I did not hear back from you, I am now wondering if you received my first email. I would appreciate if you could confirm your interest in our publishing house and I will be glad to provide you with detailed information about our services. Sincerely yours, I am looking forward to receiving a positive response from you. --Kevin WoodmannAcquisition Editor LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KGHeinrich-Böcking-Str. 6-8 66121, Saarbrücken, Germany Fon +49 681 3720-310Fax +49 681 3720-3109 k.woodmann@lap-publishing.com / www.lap-publishing.com Handelsregister Amtsgericht Saarbrücken HRA 10752General unlimited partner: VDM Management GmbHManaging directors: Thorsten Ohm (CEO), Dr. Wolfgang Philipp Müller, Esther von Krosigk

Just got a very personalized email from Ghenadie Braghis. Good that I googled and found your post. Was kinda fishy that someone knew about a thesis I worked on, which wasn't even published. Thanks for the heads up:)

so glad to find out this blog which revealed tons of good info regarding to Lambert LAP,,,,I mean I highly doubted this but I was unsure whether it's real or not. maybe they are real publishing company but just not for me dough.

Several Australian, North American and Latin-American universities have already published warnings against VDM/Labert/Editorial Academica Espanola/etc etc:

http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/theses/web.htm#V

http://www.education.monash.edu.au/staff/ednews/article.php?id=1630

http://www.gradschool.purdue.edu/thesis_faq.cfm

http://www.csu.edu.au/research/performance/herdc/criteria

http://www.usb.ve/home/node/272

The fact that Graduate Schools and even University councils make specific reference to VDM as a publisher to avoid speaks volumes about the kind of reputation that these people have amongst academic circles. One can also imagine the effect that these publications will have on your cv in front of a job or promotions committe... They are making a profit from students desperate to get into academia and ruining their reputations at the same time with their shady practices and fake 'academic' publishing... they might be legal, but they should really take a look at themselves.